Hydrophobic sheets

An a/p-hydrolase fold consisting of a hydrophobic sheet covered by a-helices on both sides. 

Allam, P. C. Cements for colorless, transparent, photoactivatable hydrophobic sheet material. Brit. GB 1144547, 1969 Chem. Abstr. 1969, 70, 107093. 

Fig. 5. Protein folding. The unfolded polypeptide chain coUapses and assembles to form simple stmctural motifs such as -sheets and a-hehces by nucleation-condensation mechanisms involving the formation of hydrogen bonds and van der Waal s interactions. Small proteins (eg, chymotrypsin inhibitor 2) attain their final (tertiary) stmcture in this way. Larger proteins and multiple protein assembhes aggregate by recognition and docking of multiple domains (eg, -barrels, a-helix bundles), often displaying positive cooperativity. Many noncovalent interactions, including hydrogen bonding, van der Waal s and electrostatic interactions, and the hydrophobic effect are exploited to create the final, compact protein assembly. Further stmctural...

Defoamers. Foam is a common problem in papermaking systems (27). It is caused by surface-active agents which are present in the pulp slurry or in the chemical additives. In addition, partially hydrophobic soHd materials can function as foam stabilizers. Foam can exist as surface foam or as a combination of surface foam and entrained air bubbles. Surface foam usually can be removed by water or steam showers and causes few problems. Entrained air bubbles, however, can slow drainage of the stock and hence reduce machine speed. Another serious effect is the formation of translucent circular spots in the finished sheet caused by permanently entrained air. 

An off-lattice minimalist model that has been extensively studied is the 46-mer (3-barrel model, which has a native state characterized by a four-stranded (3-barrel. The first to introduce this model were Honeycutt and Thirumalai [38], who used a three-letter code to describe the residues. In this model monomers are labeled hydrophobic (H), hydrophilic (P), or neutral (N) and the sequence that was studied is (H)9(N)3(PH)4(N)3(H)9(N)3(PH)5P. That is, two strands are hydrophobic (residues 1-9 and 24-32) and the other two strands contain alternating H and P beads (residues 12-20 and 36-46). The four strands are connected by neutral three-residue bends. Figure 3 depicts the global minimum confonnation of the 46-mer (3-barrel model. This (3-barrel model was studied by several researchers [38-41], and additional off-lattice minimalist models of a-helical [42] and (3-sheet proteins [43] were also investigated. 

The interiors of protein molecules contain mainly hydrophobic side chains. The main chain in the interior is arranged in secondary structures to neutralize its polar atoms through hydrogen bonds. There are two main types of secondary structure, a helices and p sheets. Beta sheets can have their strands parallel, antiparallel, or mixed. 

In barrels the hydrophobic side chains of the a helices are packed against hydrophobic side chains of the p sheet. The a helices are antiparallel and adjacent to the p strands that they connect. Thus the barrel is provided with a shell of hydrophobic residues from the a helices and the p strands. 

Since the side chains of consecutive amino acids of a p strand are on opposite sides of the P sheet, every second residue of the p strands contributes to this hydrophobic shell. The other side chains of the P strands point inside the barrel to form a hydrophobic core this core is therefore comprised exclusively of side chains of P-strand residues (Figure 4.3). 

The packing interactions between a helices and p strands are dominated by the residues Val (V), He (I), and Leu (L), which have branched hydrophobic side chains. This is reflected in the amino acid composition these three amino acids comprise approximately 40% of the residues of the P strands in parallel P sheets. The important role that these residues play in packing a helices against P sheets is particularly obvious in a/P-barrel structures, as shown in Table 4.1. 

Each repeat forms a right-handed P-loop-a structure similar to those found in the two other classes of a/p structures described earlier. Sequential p-loop-a repeats are joined together in a similar way to those in the a/P-bar-rel stmctures. The P strands form a parallel p sheet, and all the a helices are on one side of the P sheet. However, the P strands do not form a closed barrel instead they form a curved open stmcture that resembles a horseshoe with a helices on the outside and a p sheet forming the inside wall of the horseshoe (Figure 4.11). One side of the P sheet faces the a helices and participates in a hydrophobic core between the a helices and the P sheet the other side of the P sheet is exposed to solvent, a characteristic other a/p structures do not have. 

The leucine residues in this leucine-rich motif form a hydrophobic core between the P sheet and the a helices. Leucine residues 2, 5, and 7 (see Figure... 

Third, in open-sheet structures the a helices are packed against both sides of the p sheet. Each p strand thus contributes hydrophobic side chains to pack against a helices in two similar hydrophobic core regions, one on each side of the p sheet. 

The horseshoe structure is formed by homologous repeats of leucine-rich motifs, each of which forms a p-loop-a unit. The units are linked together such that the p strands form an open curved p sheet, like a horseshoe, with the a helices on the outside of the p sheet and the inside exposed to solvent. The invariant leucine residues of these motifs form the major part of the hydrophobic region between the a helices and the p sheet. 

The p sheets have the usual twist, and when two such twisted p sheets are packed together, they form a barrel-like structure (Figure 5.1). Antiparallel P structures, therefore, in general have a core of hydrophobic side chains inside the barrel provided by residues in the P strands. The surface is formed by residues from the loop regions and from the strands. The aim of this chapter is to examine a number of antiparallel p structures and demonstrate how these rather complex structures can be separated into smaller comprehensible motifs. 

The major stmctural feature of the HAz chain (blue in Figure 5.20) is a hairpin loop of two a helices packed together. The second a helix is 50 amino acids long and reaches back 76 A toward the membrane. At the bottom of the stem there is a i sheet of five antiparallel strands. The central i strand is from HAi, and this is flanked on both sides by hairpin loops from HAz. About 20 residues at the amino terminal end of HAz are associated with the activity by which the vims penetrates the host cell membrane to initiate infection. This region, which is quite hydrophobic, is called the fusion peptide. 

In these p-helix structures the polypeptide chain is coiled into a wide helix, formed by p strands separated by loop regions. In the simplest form, the two-sheet p helix, each turn of the helix comprises two p strands and two loop regions (Figure 5.28). This structural unit is repeated three times in extracellular bacterial proteinases to form a right-handed coiled structure which comprises two adjacent three-stranded parallel p sheets with a hydrophobic core in between. 

The basic structural unit of these two-sheet p helix structures contains 18 amino acids, three in each p strand and six in each loop. A specific amino acid sequence pattern identifies this unit namely a double repeat of a nine-residue consensus sequence Gly-Gly-X-Gly-X-Asp-X-U-X where X is any amino acid and U is large, hydrophobic and frequently leucine. The first six residues form the loop and the last three form a p strand with the side chain of U involved in the hydrophobic packing of the two p sheets. The loops are stabilized by calcium ions which bind to the Asp residue (Figure S.28). This sequence pattern can be used to search for possible two-sheet p structures in databases of amino acid sequences of proteins of unknown structure. 

The thioredoxin domain (see Figure 2.7) has a central (3 sheet surrounded by a helices. The active part of the molecule is a Pa(3 unit comprising p strands 2 and 3 joined by a helix 2. The redox-active disulfide bridge is at the amino end of this a helix and is formed by a Cys-X-X-Cys motif where X is any residue in DsbA, in thioredoxin, and in other members of this family of redox-active proteins. The a-helical domain of DsbA is positioned so that this disulfide bridge is at the center of a relatively extensive hydrophobic protein surface. Since disulfide bonds in proteins are usually buried in a hydrophobic environment, this hydrophobic surface in DsbA could provide an interaction area for exposed hydrophobic patches on partially folded protein substrates. 

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